Guest Author - Krissi Danielsson

No matter where you look, things can end up reminding you of pregnancy and birth if you are grieving a recent miscarriage. With the upcoming sixth anniversary of my first loss I found myself recently reflecting on some of the worst offenders in the media and culture in general that can cause pain, and I thought I'd list them here...I suppose just to let you know that if these things are bothering you too, you're not crazy.

1. A certain brand of Always menstrual pads

I didn't make a note of it at the time, but I was shocked to recently buy a bag of Always menstrual pads and find a removable sticker on it that said, "Have a happy period!" To print this on a menstrual pad strikes me as ultimately stupid even for someone not trying to conceive, as I have never met a single woman who considered her period to be something happy and worth looking forward to, but it struck me that if I had opened such a product when looking for menstrual pads to soak up post-miscarriage bleeding that I would have found it highly offensive.

2. Grocery shopping carts

I always thought of myself as weird for this one, but during the time of my losses I hated to go grocery shopping. I'd grab the shopping cart out of that line you always see by the doors where they're all jammed together, and the child seat would pop down. Empty. I couldn't bear to shop with the child seat down because it felt like it was so conspicuously empty when there should have been someone sitting in it. I always had to shove it right back up. Even now that I have living children, I cannot stand shopping carts with empty child seats down because it reminds me of that time period.

3. Pregnancy test commercials

I know companies need to advertise, but I found any images of people getting giddy and excited about pregnancy tests to be annoying. I felt jealous of anyone who could get a positive pregnancy test and then immediately start making plans for a baby, or even those that could take it as a given that a positive test meant that there was even the issue of a baby. This was worse after I went into multiple miscarriage land.

4. Those baby magazines that encourage you to sign up for a subscription as soon as you're pregnant

Sometimes you get them at the doctors' office when you first get the official confirmation of your positive, or at a maternity clothing store when you're grabbing your first pair of maternity pants if you show early on. Sometimes if your loss happens after a period of trying to conceive, you remember yourself thinking positively before the initial pregnancy and signing up for parenting magazines to prepare.

Then, after your loss, the subscription continues, rubbing salt in your wounds. You go to your mailbox only to find a magazine with a big picture of a smiling baby. In the worst cases, they start sending you stuff for your "baby" around your due date, like formula samples and diaper samples, or they put you on marketing lists and try to call and sell you children's book club subscriptions for your new little one, they say, it just makes you want to curl up in a ball and cry.

5. The world in general

Heck, while I'm at it with this list, I'll be honest. I hated the whole world sometimes when I was having miscarriages. At some points, I even disliked seeing baby animals because I couldn't cope with the idea that even animals could reproduce but I couldn't. Hearing about pregnant coworkers and relatives, and doctors who "protected" me by giving me pat, oversimplified answers when I was looking for information...all of it just stank. Thankfully that feeling passed after a while, but I think it was a normal stage.

What do you hate after your losses? Feel free to join others in the forum for discussions.